Category: Change

Springiness Delayed

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Watch me spring forward and fall back, sleepy and dazed, assaulted by the time change.

I wish to stay in bed an extra hour. I can’t. The dogs can and do. The delay in daybreak confuses them. I understand because I’m confused as well.

It has been two weeks of gradual adjustment, falling asleep early, doing yoga in the dark. But the light keeps changing, the spring keeps springing, every day is longer than the last.

I am almost persuaded that the sun will shine bright and clear on the world’s dark doings. If not, give me back that hour.

Habitats for Butterflies

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Before we go to the zoo, I memorize butterfly names from the books in my grandfather’s library. Tiger swallowtails, yellow and black, their wings majestic as they take flight from an aspen tree. Migrating monarchs drink from lupines.

Xerces blues exist only on paper, their permanent home on page 27,  “Insects of San Francisco .”  I slip the book back on the shelf and wish that someone had rescued the blues. 

My grandfather is ready to cycle with me to the tram. He wears a kerchief over his nose to block the dust. “Used to be they lived in my fields.”

Is It Me or Them?

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A week after my mom was buried, my friend, Agnes, started to resemble her. At first, it was just the nose. Then the eyes, including a dramatic change from brown to blue. Agnes grew wrinkled and unreasonable. She started arguments. I ghosted her and mourned the loss of my best friend.

One day, I picked up Agnes’s photo and did a double take. She pixelated into my mother. Then the pixels reverted to the original. Mesmerized, I watched the picture magic from one to the other until I couldn’t tell them apart. I wish I could let my mother go.

When Will We Learn

Creative Commons, Eugenio Hansen, OFC
File:Martin Luther King, Jr .svg


King and Gandhi trudged across the mall in DC. January sleet muddied the streets. Instead of shadows, their spirits cast glowing light over the dark pockets between street lamps.

“You scare me.” An NRA tough pulled out a gun. 

King stopped. “That’s because you don’t know me.”

The tough cocked the gun. “I don’t need to. I’m standing my ground.”

Gandhi said, “Let us talk, son.”

“This does the talking for me.” NRA fired. 

The bullet spun between the three men, caught in a mighty vortex. King said, “Nothing is more powerful than non-violence. Now put the gun away.”

Thanksgiving Thoughts

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I’m thankful that 300 years after the Treaty of New Echota was signed, the American Congress is considering seating Kimberly Teehee as a delegate from the Cherokee Nation. It shouldn’t have taken this long. Not every tribe gets a seat at the table, albeit a non-voting seat. But it is a step.

I am grateful to Deb Haaland, Interior Secretary, for her support of Native language recovery, a reversal of the agency’s historic efforts to destroy Native culture. Throughout history, language has kept subject cultures alive, preserved the dignity of their peoples, and fostered a richer experience for all.

Faerie Rings

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In the shadow of year’s end, a tired dribble of twilight musings unleashes thoughts muddled and unrestrained. They fall on damp forest floors.

The smell of pines might clarify, might of a sudden reveal the intentions of close-mouthed colorful shedding trees.

Autumn cold settles like a fog on layers of soft loam. Earthworms transform decomposing leaf mold into soil.

The worms feel sleep coming on and burrow deeper, warmer. Their heat keeps the planet humming even as cool air portends a slowing.

Spores burst from a deteriorating toadstool. Lacy umbrellas unfurl. The Little People sip warm cider at season’s turning.

Taming a Princess

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King Thrushbeard disguised himself as a poor minstrel and married a mean princess. He hoped she’d learn kindness.

Mildred, the castle’s matriarch mouse disapproved. “This girl’s been spoiled, spoiled, spoiled.”
“Not so. She fed my grandbabies from her plate,” said the attic mouse.

It took time, but living a simple life with a person who loved her inspired humility. She recognized how much we need others and wanted to help, not hurt. She found joy in small acts of caring.

When the minstrel revealed that he was the King and she his Queen, the princess was worthy of the honor.

How Long Before the Lake Dries Out?

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In 1975, I biked my dog to Stanford campus. At Tressider Union, I drank coffee. He rested under the table. Afterwards, we stopped at Lake Lag. Cas retrieved sticks, swimming murky water. “Two-thirds what it was,” the old timers said.

In 2012, my niece moved into a dorm that backed onto a weedy, muddy shadow of Lake Lag. I expected it to fill with rainy season water. No luck, dry like this year.

Hundred year drought we’re in. Arsenic blows off a drying Great Salt Lake, a hazard to fish and people. Climate cycle, climate change, it’s too damn hot.

Death, Natural and Not

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“The moment you accept your own death, something in you changes.”* Words spoken by a Ukrainian refugee slumped on a shelter bed, phone in hand. Resigned. Her words resonate, a reminder of my mother’s decline. 

Mom has changed. She says very little, sleeps a lot. No more raging temper tantrums over how much butter there is on the toast. Little things matter little, big things less. Nothing big like Russian planes threaten Mom. Nothing external. Nothing like this Ukrainian woman faces. And yet she is upended. Shuttling from hospital to rehab, death has crept inside my mother, weighing her down.

* From The Economist April 30, 2022 “The Wreckage Within.”

Stir Things Down

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The dates to celebrate spring are close this year, within a month, and yet some religions seem far apart. They fight each other. They fight among themselves. “They are young,” Eostre said, “or maybe a bit territorial, those men.”

This ancient goddess brought them all together: old and new religions, female and male deities. The witches stirred a brew of love, the opposite of hate. They loaded it into clouds that rained tears on the land that had dried to dust. Cracked seeds opened into bulbs that bloomed lilies, all kinds, fields full. The perfume of peace filled the air.